Hell yeah, let’s make this year’s thread a fat and juicy one!Last year’s thread became so desolate at times I gave up on posting new stuff, but the recent upswing in activity gives me fresh hope for 2018.

Some fresh goodies (picking them basically at random, so much good stuff coming out continuously):

I need to slowly get back into the afrobeats of this year, so it'd be great to have some help from ILM if you guys care to post even things that are not totally groundbreaking :) (or do you all experience fatigue)

sub in, idk, an Asha Bhosle sample or something for Lily Allen and that Burna Boy song would be unstoppable (not that she's objectively ruinous or anything, tbh I don't remember much about her beyond reports of her being 'problematic' a while back)

Also still catching up on 2017 releases. Interesting that on Congolese singer Fally Ipupa's Tokoos album, that one of his tracks that utilized more traditional Congolese influences "Eloko Oyo" got the most Youtube attention. Ipupa used to be in Congolese rumba/soukus bands but tried to crossover with this album with more autotuned vocals, afrop beats and guests like Wizkid.

The flip side of international success? Fally has taken a direct hit from the Congolese community for his new album. Many are saying he is selling out, that he has compromised his originality in order to follow everyone else. However Fally is fully convinced that he always has a unique touch. And given the success of his single “Eloko Oyo,” with its 21 million views on YouTube in five months, he is right. This is a record for an artist coming from a Congolese rumba background. But this is nothing compared to the goals he has in mind.

Fantastic cover design too. Nihiloxica appears to be a group of drummers and a synth player making this dark Ugandan techno racket which in my own limited knowledge could only be compared to things like the GQom Oh! stuff from SA, but not really like that. The Sounds of Sisso comp is crazy, and again provides a nice Ugandan analogue to the frenetic, helium-paced Shangaan electro style.

Nabozo, “Without You” is a 2015 song by LK Kuddy ft. Yung6ix. The remix with Wizkid dropped early 2016. Is “Your Body” the one with Akon? ‘Cause that would be “For You” from Wizzy’s 2014 Ayo album. Lots of mislabelling going on out there!

This one is very recent though, the latest installment in Wizzy’s Killertunes trilogy, after “Opoju” with DJ Spinall and “Manya” with Mut4y:

Another thing: that Sounds of Sisso compilation is all Tanzanian stuff, not Ugandan (that includes the Makaveli track posted above). https://nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-of-sissoNyege Nyege Tapes, the label, is based in Kampala, but they aim to release “outsider music from around the region and beyond”.

Anyway, a lot of good stuff on there. In their relentlessness and piling on of chipmunk and other sound effects some tracks remind me of those crazy Ball J productions from the azonto era at times.

YT is terribly impractical for exploring new stuff, especially since they personalized suggestions by filling them with your latest listens. There's a few mass playlists that are regularly updated, but not enough great songs to sit through them.

I apologize for the lack of information. i thought that the caption would appear, but it didn't, i don't know why. i'm kinda addicted to "Mariana". Nelson Freitas is really big in Portugal, although I never payed much attention to his music until this one came up.

hmmm I'm not sure about it yet, might need to give it a couple more plays. First thoughts are that there's something missing from it, like a hook of some sort that isn't there...

I was thinking last night while I was tired that it would be great if (some of) the specialist thread regulars were to compile a sort of 'best of year' or 'best of all time' list - say 25 absolute anthems of the genre and then make a poll that's open to all board members? It would be a great chance for people who don't post or follow these threads to get a good primer on a style they aren't familiar with. What do you think?

yeah so far the Blinky album is less out there than I was expecting, and scrolling up I see breastcrawl was talking about neo-soul influences on it so I'm not sure where I got that idea. More positively it reminds me of last year's Pierre Kwenders album that I love.

The album is far from perfect (his vocals are quite weak for one) but there’s 5 or 6 tracks that I really like. (rob, I think I can sorta see your Kwenders comparison, but BB feels far more stodgy to me. Did you know Pierre K has a new song out?)

OkayAfrica’s East African 25: Yes, I like that Wasafi Records sound, am currently digging “Katika”, which I posted last week. The biggest Tanzanian hit of my year, Rayvanny’s “Chombo”, is not on the list unfortunately.

I wasn’t blown away by any of the songs I hadn’t heard before. I do like this punchy dancehall track though:

Anything resembling singeli or other “street music” (Tanzanian or otherwise) is probably not mainstream enough for this kind of list - although some of those videos have millions of views iirc.

Which brings me to this: It might be old news, but I just found out that the Sound of Sisso compilation (which includes Makaveli’s “Nammiliki”) and other Nyege Nyege Tapes releases are now on Spotify (these were discussed on this thread back in February).

I like the poll idea, btw. It could be a good way to generate more interest in African pop. I mean, 12 people voted in the Burna Boy poll and the Rolling playlist on Spotify has only 15 followers, down from 29 last year and 55(!) in 2016. That says a lot about the current state of ILM, I guess (as well as forks’ marketing skills).

Those numbers don’t say everything though, because I don’t think the thread was busier in previous years - so maybe the goal should be stimulating engagement more than anything, and a poll might help do that.

Yeah, the Odunsi love really sticks out. He seems to be the figurehead of the alté scene, the “alternative” (and I guess quite bourgie) scene that broke through commercially this year and that’s associated with Lagos Island (he and the Island scene are both featured in the Mr Eazi documentary I posted a few days ago).

I don’t find his music particularly interesting either, for the reasons rob states, but I get that it might be exciting/cool to have someone doing credible homegrown contemporary r&b when you’re a Nigerian listener.

I like that wavy/vibey/groovy thing so much more when it’s mixed with a healthy dose of Afro elements: that’s why I like the Show Dem Camp album better than the Odunsi, for instance (they came out a week apart iirc). My impression is that in Ghana they’re better at this, Kuvie is a good example.

I realize that I may not have expressed myself all that clearly, but I was specifically referring to the r&b-kind of wavy/vibey/groovy, which is why I singled out Kuvie on the Ghanaian side (both as a producer and on his own album).

Burna’s “afro-fusion” has always been much more heavily infused with reggae/dancehall than with r&b. And while Odunsi calls his music “afro-fusion” too, citing Burna and Blackmagic as major influences (as well as older artists like Wale Thompson and Angelique Kidjo), and I can hear the Burna, especially in his older stuff, the heavy r&b focus makes his version of fusion a different kettle of fish imo.

Someone like Juls (again on the Ghanaian side, by way of the UK) is closer to the Burna aesthetic, I think, to the point they’ve actually worked together (Burna and Odunsi have this in common at least), but I’m not sure that Juls arrived at his sound through Burna.

Quote: ”By now, it was no news that Odunsi was set to release his first album which was about to be the next big export out of Nigeria since Wizkid’s ’Superstar’ album.”

Another quote: ”Today, we celebrate a young man who has distinctively filtered his sound and name to places we can’t yet imagine, validating his throne as the next big thing. Maybe the greatest we may see out of Africa.”

I def have noticed ppl in the industry here seem to see Odunsi as more viable than lots of 'mainstream' african stars ... idk if its classed bias or alt branding or what but it feels both extremely predictable & not necessarily bad but potentially bad

The industry would be wrong in thinking that, I think. American r&b and hip hop artists are starting to add that afro flavour by themselves already. No need to water down stuff. Kpop is finally getting there on its own terms now as well after years of failed crossover attempts.

(I’m actually partially retracting my “I like Odunsi’s music fine” statement from earlier. That was based on listening to his older stuff, but I just now listened to his album in full again, and I still think it’s overwhelmingly boring)

i just think its more about who its marketed to ... fans of tierra whack & frank ocean are more likely to like odunsi than wizkid ... but fans of drake are more likely to like wizkid ... this is more about audiences + marketing imo

I didn't listen to the whole Odunsi album, but it was def dull. That said, I think deej is right here even though I'd never heard of this dude until recently. I'd add that Odunsi singing in standardized English has to be a factor too.

What deej said may be true to some extent, but I’m not sure the marketing angle is the right way to go. The only way anything is really going to happen is if you bring the real thing. Marketed-towards-US Wizkid didn’t happen, Made-in-Lagos Wizkid might, and everyone would be better and happier for it.

Same thing with the standardized English: look at the success of reggaeton and, again, Kpop (in case you missed it, BTS is #1-album and top-10-single-level huge in the US and elsewhere singing and rapping predominantly in Korean) .

btw, funny old thing: Odunsi is not on this Best Nigerian Albums list that NickB posted on the 2018 EOY music lists thread (Show Dem Camp is though):

I think making it an issue of “authenticity” is problematic tho ... isn’t odunsi seen as, like, more authentic in the sense of he’s a regular guy/ anti-showbiz / “real talent” ? That’s as much “real” African music as the stuff we find more interesting musically & more successful commercially

I’m not questioning Odunsi’s authenticity, I’m pretty sure he’s making the music he wants to make. I was looking at it from the US industry’s perspective, since you brought it up, and I think there’s (new) lessons to be learned from Kpop and Latin pop when it comes to crossing over with “foreign” genres in the late 2010s.

I realize that I may not have expressed myself all that clearly, but I was specifically referring to the r&b-kind of wavy/vibey/groovy, which is why I singled out Kuvie on the Ghanaian side (both as a producer and on his own album).

Burna’s “afro-fusion” has always been much more heavily infused with reggae/dancehall than with r&b. And while Odunsi calls his music “afro-fusion” too, citing Burna and Blackmagic as major influences (as well as older artists like Wale Thompson and Angelique Kidjo), and I can hear the Burna, especially in his older stuff, the heavy r&b focus makes his version of fusion a different kettle of fish imo.

Someone like Juls (again on the Ghanaian side, by way of the UK) is closer to the Burna aesthetic, I think, to the point they’ve actually worked together (Burna and Odunsi have this in common at least), but I’m not sure that Juls arrived at his sound through Burna.

Colloquially its simply a delineator of perceived countercultural difference e.g. I get called alte for wearing barbour jackets and having a dog.

In as far as it does relates to music and visual style, Burna Boy was a fair representation of that bohemian, cosmopolitan aesthetic for a while before the movement took hold.

Burna has played with a lot of sounds (to very mixed results in the earlier years) and while his delivery/vocals have typically favoured reggae/dancehall it's probably wrong to frame his music exclusively in such terms when R&B influence has primacy in a number of his most prominent tracks; "Like to Party", "Don Gorgon", "Pree me"...

"Soke" in particular represents what I see as an awakening point both in the crystalisation of Burna's own sound and laying the groundwork for a kind of decidedly non-danceable wavy/vibey/groovy R&B that wasn't presumed to be in high demand.

I def have noticed ppl in the industry here seem to see Odunsi as more viable than lots of 'mainstream' african stars ... idk if its classed bias or alt branding or what but it feels both extremely predictable & not necessarily bad but potentially bad

Critic Jason King mentions Burna Boy in his essay in the Slate critics roundtable

Though Africa has largely fallen off the American news radar, the music rocketing out of the continent remains straight fire. Projects by GuiltyBeatz, Aka, Fatoumata Diawara, Seun Kuti, Femi Kuti, Emmanuel Jal, Burna Boy, Muzi, Tal National, and Ammar 808 are all worth streaming. My favorite contemporary record this year, however, was I’m a Dream, the sophomore set from Gambian-Swedish chanteuse Seinabo Sey.

There was a similar rejection of artifice across the Atlantic, in the dynamic, compelling world of Afropop. It’s been thrilling to watch as some of the genre’s stars abandoned the shiny, transparent attempts at American crossover of recent years. Instead of paying top dollar to collaborate with household-name rappers or drenching strummed kora with arpeggiated 808s, many leaned into traditional Naija sounds and motifs. It’s not that they hadn’t found success beyond their borders—Wizkid’s “Soco” and pretty much any recent Davido single blared from cars outside my Brooklyn window all summer—but maybe simply that the efforts, largely unreciprocated by American artists, no longer served them. Burna Boy’s excellent Outside seems to have lasted, even though it was released way back in January.